Made for Distribution: Robert Capa and John Steinbeck's Visit to the USSR, 1947

In the summer of 1947, soon after founding the Magnum photo agency, the photographer Robert Capa and the writer John Steinbeck spent six weeks traveling throughout the Soviet Union. This talk examines the distribution of their story in the press between 1947 and 1948 to show how Magnum Photos learned to sell picture stories to magazine and newspaper editors on both sides of the Atlantic. Looking behind the scenes at Magnum's operations offers a macro perspective from which to understand the interaction between photographs and magazines, and helps map the infrastructure behind postwar visual culture.